Sunday, February 15, 2015

Lock and Dam 27



Back before there was the Ohio River as we know it today, and after there was the Ohio River in its natural state, there was the Ohio River controlled by a series of small locks and dams.

About one-third of the way down the river from Pittsburgh to Cairo, or one-half if you measure travel by the time you have to stop and make a lock, there was Lock and Dam 27 near the small incorporated community of Proctorville, Ohio.

Located at Mile 301.0, Lock and Dam 27 was one of four small wicket dams, also known as low-lift dams, that were replaced by the Greenup Locks and Dam at Mile 341 in 1961.

The low-lift dams were authorized by the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1909 to provide a nine-foot navigation channel for the entire length of the Ohio River, thus making the river navigable even in times of drought. The river was once described as being a mile wide (in flood season) and a foot deep (in summer).  While the old packet boats were said to be able to float on a heavy dew, that was not enough.

So Congress authorized a series of 54 locks and dams. Not all were built, and some were replaced in the 1930s, particularly those near Pittsburgh and those in what would become the pool of the Gallipolis Locks and Dam, which was built to improve navigation on the Kanawha River.

A lot has been written about steamboats of that era. Boats can be exciting, and some are still around. But dams are dams – boring old things that just sit there and don’t do anything exciting. But dams are what made the Ohio River as we know it.

I’m most familiar with Lock and Dam 27, so let’s take it as an example.

Here, in some old navigation charts, are dimensions, elevations and other numbers associated with Lock and Dam 27.


As you can see, the drop in elevation going from the pool above Dam 27 to the pool below was 6.4 feet, or a bit less than half of how deep Crounse Corp. loads its coal barges today. The dam used huge wood-and-steel members called wickets to hold back the river. The wickets were raised to hold back water when needed and were dropped to the river bed when they weren’t. When the wickets were down, boats could pass over them in a section known as the navigable pass.

When the Hannibal Locks and Dam was built in the Pittsburgh District, a section of wickets was preserved and put in display so people could see how the old dams worked.


There was also a section called the beartrap weir, which was used to control the upstream river level when minor adjustments were needed. And there were other wickets that dropped automatically when river levels allowed for it. That was called the Bebout weir.

Remains of the old machinery, more than a half century after they were taken out of service.
 
I don’t have a picture of Lock and Dam 27, but it was similar to Lock and Dam 28, which you can see here.

If you want a lot of detail, I recommend the book “Men, Mountains and Rivers”  by Leland Johnson. It’s a history of the Huntington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It was published in 1977.

From “Men, Mountains and Rivers”:

The finishing touch at each lock and dam was the operations building and the neat frame, brick, and terra cotta homes adjacent to the lock, built for the use of the lockmaster and his chief assistant and their families. The lockmaster and his assistant were on twenty-four hour call; other operating employees lived nearby and commuted. Gardening was permitted, and great care was lavished on maintaining sturdy fences, well-tended buildings, and closely clipped gr4ass at the lock reservations. The reservations were a pleasant place to spend a lazy summer afternoon, and the first funds spent for public recreation in the Huntington District were invested in picnic tables and basic facilities at the lock reservations.

Greenup raised its pool slowly. Lock and Dam 27 was the last of the four in the new Greenup pool to be removed, work that was accomplished by the Dravo Corp. Below Greenup the Meldahl pool is 485 feet above mean sea level ( MSL), and the Greenup lift is 30 feet. Lock and Dam 30 at Mile 339.4 kept its pool at 490.5 feet. Lock and Dam 29 at Mile 319.0 at 498.5, and Lock and Dam 28 at Mile 311.6 at 505.6

Can you imagine the traffic on the river today having to stop at all four locks and do double cuts?

The powerhouse for Dam 28 is now a senior citizens center, and people live in the houses next to it. The Dam 29 property was acquired years ago by Allied Chemical and the buildings demolished. The last I knew of the Dam 30 powerhouse was decades ago, and I think it was the Greenup County school board office, but I don’t know if that’s still the case.

If I still worked at the Huntington newspaper and had access to its old archives, I could tell you more about the four old dams and when they were taken out of service, but I no longer have access to that information.

The Greenup pool, at 515 feet above mean sea level, is three feet higher than the old Dam 27 pool. Because of that, part of the lock remains. The upper and lower guide walls are still there for people to walk on or fish from. Part of the grounds are a public park. One of the old buildings now houses the offices of the Fairland Local School District. In the 1980s, I covered several school board meetings there in my duties as Lawrence County reporter for The Herald-Dispatch of Huntington.

On Oct. 2, 2008, the upper level of old Lock and Dam 27 was where I got my last photo of the Delta Queen on its final trip down the Ohio. I was not the only one at the park. I saw two boys, probably in their early teens, hanging around on the lock wall. They didn’t act as though they knew the significance of the boat passing them. Maybe they did, but they didn’t care as much as people like me. And this heron likely wasn't impressed, either.


The park at old Lock and Dam 27 has its visitors. I’ve seen markings on the ground for a middle school cross country meet. I’ve seen a man almost my age climbing a tree to recover a remote-control airplane. And as this picture shows, I have seen the boat ramp there used for at least one baptism. What this picture doesn’t show are two or three guys sitting nearby, doing their best to ignore the ceremony going on behind them.


Going back to the Leland Johnson quote above, I sometimes wonder what it must have been like living and working at one of those old dams. I guess I could go back down to Paducah and Golconda, assuming the lockmasters still live on site and assuming the Corps would even let me in, considering the post-9/11 security measures it has taken. There are pictures of maneuver boats out on the river, but I haven’t seen many pictures of living at an Ohio River lock and Dam from the age when the wicket dams kept the pool. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places.

It’s like many other things, though. I look through my old pictures and I am reminded of what I didn’t photograph with my little Kodak Instamatic back in the 1960s – the loafers at my father’s country store, by siblings and I taking in hay, the produce market in Huntington where the Big Sandy Superstore Arena stands today, my friends in that small community where we rode bikes and played basketball – and more. The old locks were like that, I suppose. A lot of people got pictures of the steamboats, but apparently not many wanted pictures of the locks themselves.

Lock and Dam 27 was taken out of service in 1961. I doubt that many people who worked there are still alive. A few, maybe. If anyone knows of any, I would like to talk to them.

The father of my onetime best friend, who passed away recently, was the final lockmaster of one of the wicket dams upriver. I hear he was the last person to lock the gate when it went out of service. In 1980, I saw the place and got some pictures. The paint on the wooden welcome sign was peeling and vandals had had their way with the buildings. The facilities leading down to the esplanade were overgrown with the brush and tree that take over everything in southern Ohio. My friend’s father passed away in the 1990s, I think, so his stories are gone.

The two old dams on the lower part of the Ohio -- Locks and Dam 52 at Paducah, Ky., and Metropolis, Ill., and Locks and Dam 53 at Golconda -- are still in service. Back in the 1970s, I think, "temporary" 1,200-foot locks were added to accommodate modern traffic. As things tend to go, temporary became permanent, as the Olmstead Locks and Dam has taken forever to be built.

Anyway, there it is, the very rough first draft of my first chapter on the old locks and dams on the Ohio River. This year or next I want to get down to Paducah again and visit Locks and Dam 52 again, as I did in 1986. And I would like to stop by Locks and Dam 53. Three decades gives a person time to sort his thoughts on what’s important and to see what and who has changed.

And I will continue to visit Lock and Dam 27, thinking about the pictures I can get and once in a while imagining what it was like in the 1920s through the 1950s.

15 comments:

Unknown said...

I attended school in the lock buildings. Do the are they still there? I remember a big weeping willow tree on the grounds I used to climb. I was looking for pictures to show my nephew. Do you know if any pictures of the buildings exists?

ohio981 said...

Let me see what I can do.

Phil Pockras said...

Thanks for this post. My grandfather, Howard C. Curtis, worked at both Lock and Dam #27 and #28 at different times; mostly up at #27. He and my grandmother, Sarah Esther Edwards Curtis, lived first on what was then called High St. (now Wilgus) and then on Elizabeth. One of my early memories is standing on the esplanade on the Ohio shore, on a beautiful summer day, probably in 1957, holding my Gramps' hand while overlooking the river. Mother and her two older sisters, all gone, were, of course, native to Proctorville. Both my Curtis grandparents died in 1957, when I was a little kid. I barely remember either of them.

My other grandfather was Col. Harry Pockras, District Engineer for the Corps. He designed and oversaw construction of the Gallipolis Locks and Dam in 1937, as well as Huntington's floodwalls in 1945, among other projects. My dad mostly grew up in Huntington on Fairfax Dr. in the Beverly Hills neighborhood. I was just there last summer for the first time in a loooong time. Wish I could get up the nerve to knock on the door, introduce myself, and see what the place looks like inside. I haven't been in there since my grandfather retired from the Army and my grandparents moved away to Florida in 1957.

Unknown said...

I live just below the McAlpine Locks in Louisville, and for most of my life Ive been able to see the river and hear the horn when the lock gates are about to open. McAlpine is much bigger than the older, obsolete locks you describe in your blog, but I've seen it change quite a bit too, over my 40 year life. Lock chambers have been added, and lengthened twice. The old blue drawbridge and cantilever bridge to cross the canal are replaced with a high arched bridge now. Access to Shippingport Island, between the locks and dam is still allowed, but a bit more supervised than it used to be. Remains of the old wickets and bear traps are still there, and you can still walk down to the falls of the Ohio fossil beds on the indiana side and occasionally see some trilobites, shark teeth, or flint arrow heads.

Your reminiscence makes me want to learn more about some of the river features I've been around my whole life, learning to swim, fish, and goofing off as a boy, and working on the river now. Thank you for the memories and the inspiration.

Dave Hosey said...

Really enjoyed this article. I grew up in Rome, the location of old lock and dam 27, just up river from Proctorville. My first grade year of school in the Fairland school system was spent in the old lock master's house. Whenever I travel back home to Ohio from Georgia , I always take time to drive down to the old locks to take in the river.

Matthew Pittman said...

I grew up in this area as well. I went to kindergarten in the lock houses. Later our Cross Country team ran home races here. I fished many hours off the concrete sides. Today I visited there again and memories came flooding back.

The lock houses look exactly the same, no better no worse. They are such sturdy buildings that seem to be strong enough to make it through an atomic blast. The lower area needs some attention but many still put their boats in at this ramp.

Such a warm feeling to know I am not the only person who gets nostalgic about this place and the old river itself.

Thanks for writing - great piece and great comments by all.

Unknown said...

I too grew up on the river at lock 28, mt father worked there for many years and i loved it there. whenever i am back there i always drive to the locks, and once again i am back in my childhood. I so loved those years there.

Linda Schnoor said...

Good Day,
I'm pretty excited to have found your blog. I began years ago to look into any information I could find about Dam #27 online and while looking at some old genealogy records came across your site just today.

Our connection is this: Our grandfather Frank Cousins helped construct Dam #27 in 1920. In fact we have a handwritten letter to his brother back home in New Jersey sent from Dam #27, Proctorsville, Ohio on Nov 2, 1920.

I want to share some of the letter. I type it just as he wrote it. The handwriting is beautiful, but you can see that much of the punctuation is missing. Grandpa was young when he left school to go to work, but he managed to do well for himself with his life. The letter begins by saying that "we did not go to Savannah, but went to Wash. D.C. and stayed there ten days." He said you could not buy a job there (because of many who had come into the city after the war, is my assumption). The letter continues:

"Then we came out here to go to work on the Ohio river we are putting up a dam here it is a goverment job and we get paid by the month. West Virginia is on the other side of the river and Kentucky is about 6 or 7 miles from here. we had a 15 hour ride on the train coming here and came all true the Blue ridge mountains and all the springs white sulphur and Hot springs and all them places we came in on the C&O R.R. I think it is as cold as in Newark down here. I dont know how long we will stay here it is good money here if anybody stays we live right in camp."

Frank went into the Army in 1918 and basically went through many months of Army training and from other letters he said that he thought they were training them up as well for the Army Reserves. (WWI had drown to a close). I don't have any records to indicate that Frank was a Reservist. But, I was wondering if you knew whether the government did indeed use Army Reservists to build the dams during this time period? Frank referred to "we" in this letter and I don't know if that is he and a buddy or a group of Reservists.

Thanks for any information you might have! Some day I want to visit the sites out there. I live in VA, so they are not all that far away.

Linda Schnoor

Linda Schnoor said...

Good Day,
I'm pretty excited to have found your blog. I began years ago to look into any information I could find about Dam #27 online and while looking at some old genealogy records came across your site just today.

Our connection is this: Our grandfather Frank Cousins helped construct Dam #27 in 1920. In fact we have a handwritten letter to his brother back home in New Jersey sent from Dam #27, Proctorsville, Ohio on Nov 2, 1920.

I want to share some of the letter. I type it just as he wrote it. The handwriting is beautiful, but you can see that much of the punctuation is missing. Grandpa was young when he left school to go to work, but he managed to do well for himself with his life. The letter begins by saying that "we did not go to Savannah, but went to Wash. D.C. and stayed there ten days." He said you could not buy a job there (because of many who had come into the city after the war, is my assumption). The letter continues:

"Then we came out here to go to work on the Ohio river we are putting up a dam here it is a goverment job and we get paid by the month. West Virginia is on the other side of the river and Kentucky is about 6 or 7 miles from here. we had a 15 hour ride on the train coming here and came all true the Blue ridge mountains and all the springs white sulphur and Hot springs and all them places we came in on the C&O R.R. I think it is as cold as in Newark down here. I dont know how long we will stay here it is good money here if anybody stays we live right in camp."

Frank went into the Army in 1918 and basically went through many months of Army training and from other letters he said that he thought they were training them up as well for the Army Reserves. (WWI had drown to a close). I don't have any records to indicate that Frank was a Reservist. But, I was wondering if you knew whether the government did indeed use Army Reservists to build the dams during this time period? Frank referred to "we" in this letter and I don't know if that is he and a buddy or a group of Reservists.

Thanks for any information you might have! Some day I want to visit the sites out there. I live in VA, so they are not all that far away.

Linda Schnoor

ohio981 said...

That's a good question, and I'll have to look into it somehow. I know some dams were built by private contractors, but with some the government handled the work itself. As for Dam 27, I'm can't say right now.

Linda Schnoor said...

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

I live just up the hill on Lock #27 road. This is so interesting, thank you. I walk to the area alot and wonder about the memories connected with the old lock and dam. There is planned Festival to mark centennial of Lock and Dam 27,a celebration of the lock and dam November 18, 2023. Grant money was awarded for improving this area, it is looking great and more to come. Benches installed, excavating, pickle ball and basketball court. Very many people visit and used this area and now with renovations, I believe even more people with get to enjoy this area. You can visit the website herald dispatch.com to view information and pictures.

ohio981 said...

I was the one who wrote the article in The Herald-Dispatch.

Linda Schnoor said...

How interesting that there will be a festival. I might have to come out and see the old lock and imagine my grandpa working on it over a hundred years ago.

Anonymous said...

Hello. My father was born at Lock 27. I come from many generations of Riverboat men. The Wright family!